Towards old-age pensions for everyone in Mexico

By Larry Willmore, IIASA Research Scholar

Until recently, all old-age pensions in Mexico were earnings-related, financed with government subsidies and payroll taxes. For this reason only 22% of older Mexicans had pensions in the year 2000. By 2013, thanks to social pensions, coverage had risen to 88%. Social pensions are non-contributory benefits, which do not require a record of employment or contributions to a retirement scheme.

Ilya Frankazoid / Shutterstock.com

An elderly woman sells flowers on the street of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

In a new paper published by HelpAge International, a London-based charity, I chronicle the rise of social pensions in Mexico, and discuss what remains to be done.

The rise in pension coverage began in 2001, with the introduction of a universal pension for residents of Mexico City (the Federal District) aged 70 and older. The scheme was extremely popular, and the governor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, left office with high approval ratings. He left to campaign for the presidency, promising to extend universal pensions to the rest of the country. He was the only candidate to support a social pension in the 2006 presidential race. Although the promise of a universal pensions resonated with voters, Mr López lost narrowly to Felipe Calderón, who disliked social pensions in general, and universal pensions in particular.

Despite President Calderón’s opposition to social pensions, members of Congress were able to launch a universal 70 y más pension scheme, providing monthly benefits of MX$500 (US$45) for rural Mexicans aged 70 and over. In January 2012 the unthinkable happened – Calderón in his last year of office extended the 70 y más scheme to urban Mexico. The target population (rural and urban) increased from 2.0 to 3.5 million, even though the program now excluded those with earnings-related pensions, so was no longer universal.

In the meantime, 17 of Mexico’s 31 states had followed Mexico City’s lead by introducing social pensions on their own. The federal entities that introduced social pensions are diverse, and have little in common in terms of health, education, income or coverage by earnings-related pensions. Sub-national schemes also vary significantly in terms of coverage and benefit level. Interestingly, the only two federal entities to introduce universal pensions were, respectively, the most developed (Federal District) and the least developed (Chiapas).

By 2012 social pensions in Mexico had shifted from a marginal political issue supported by a single political party, to one supported by the presidential candidate of each major party. Enrique Peña Nieto promised to lower the age of eligibility from 70 to 65 years. He won the election and, on assuming office, immediately extended social pensions to those aged 65-69 while continuing to exclude recipients of an earnings-related pension.

Mexico has moved quickly from limited to near universal pension coverage, but progress is urgently needed in three areas:

  • Pension coverage is incomplete. Nearly one million older people have no pension. They should be added to the social pension registry as soon as possible.
  • The social pension currently covers only half the cost of food needed for bare subsistence. It should be doubled immediately, to reach the extreme poverty line.
  •  The social pension should be extended to those with an earnings-related pension, restoring the ideal of a universal pension. Without universality, it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to increase the size of Mexico’s social pension to the extreme poverty line or higher.

Reference
Larry Willmore (2014). Towards universal pension coverage in Mexico. Pension watch briefing no. 13, HelpAge International, May 2014. http://www.helpage.org/download/537ccce61a7b6

 

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Modeling ancient history to inform the future

By Marcus Thomson, IIASA alumnus and a researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), the University of California, Santa Barbara

IIASA alumnus Marcus Thomson explains how what we have learnt about prehistoric farming cultures can be used to provide useful insights on human societal responses to climate change.

The climate of the western half of the North American continent, between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coastal region, is dry by European standards. The American Southwest, in particular, centered roughly on the intersection of the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, is predominantly desert between high mountain plateaus. It is, and has always been, a challenging environment for farmers. Yet the prehistoric Southwest was home to complex maize-based agricultural societies. In fact, until the 19th century growth of industrial cities like New York, the Southwest contained ruins of the largest buildings north of Mexico — and these had been abandoned centuries before the Spanish arrived in the Americas.

© Mudwalker | Dreamstime.com

For more than a century, researchers have pored over data, from proxies of paleo-environmental change, to historiographies collected by explorers, to archaeology and computational models of human occupation, and produced a detailed picture of the socio-environmental, economic, and climatic conditions that could explain why these sites were abandoned. While details vary in fine-grained analyses of the various sub-groupings of peoples in the region, the big picture is one of societal transformation in adapting to climate change.

Also important is just how the climate changed during the period, because similar dynamics are expected to emerge in the future as a consequence of global warming. European historians point to a medieval era with generally warmer mean annual temperatures. In the Southwestern United States however, which is more sensitive to changes in drought than temperature, the period between roughly AD 850 to 1350 is known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). The warm, dry MCA was followed by a long stretch of increased changes in the availability of water, known as the Little Ice Age (LIA). More frequent “warm droughts” at the end of the MCA, and generally increasing changes in water resources at the onset of the LIA, is thought to be a good analogy for future conditions in western North America.

When I had the good fortune to visit IIASA as a participant of the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in 2016, I worked with research scholars Juraj Balkovič and Tamás Krisztin to develop a model of ancient Fremont Native American maize. The Fremont were an ancient forager-farmer people who lived in the vicinity of modern Utah. We used a climate model reconstruction of the temperature and rainfall between AD 850 and 1450 to drive this maize crop model, and compared modeled crop yields against changes in radiocarbon-derived occupations – in other words, the information gathered from carbon dated artifacts that show that an area was occupied by a particular people – from a few archaeological areas in Utah.

© Galyna Andrushko | Dreamstime.com

Among our findings was that changes in local temperatures appeared to play a larger role in the lives, practices and habits of the people who lived there than changes in regional, long-term temperature conditions [1]. Later, while a researcher at IIASA myself, I returned to the subject with one of our coauthors, professor Glen MacDonald of the University of California, Los Angeles, using an expanded geographic range and a more sophisticated treatment of radiocarbon dated occupation likelihoods.

We used the climate model to reconstruct prehistoric maize growing season lengths and mean annual rainfall for Fremont sites. We found that the most populous and resilient Fremont communities were at sites with low-variability season lengths; and low populations coincided with, or followed, periods of variable season lengths. This study confirmed the important dependence on climate variability; and more importantly, our results are in line with others on modern smallholder farming contexts.

More details on our latest study [2] have just been published online in Environmental Research Letters (ERL). It will become part of an ERL special issue looking at societal resilience drawing lessons from the past 5000 years. Studies like these can give useful insights on human societal responses to climate change because these ancient civilizations are, in a sense, completed experiments with complex human-environmental systems. For decision makers, who must plan early to commit resources to offset the effects of future climate change on smallholder farmers in similarly drought-sensitive, marginally productive environments, these studies indicate that year-to-year climatic variability drives occupation change more than long-term temperature change.

References:

[1] Thomson MJ, Balkovič J, Krisztin T, & MacDonald GM (2019). Simulated impact of paleoclimate change on Fremont Native American maize farming in Utah, 850–1449 CE, using crop and climate models. Quaternary International, 507, pp.95-107 [pure.iiasa.ac.at/15472]

[2] Thomson MJ, & MacDonald GM (In press). Climate and growing season variability impacted the intensity and distribution of Fremont maize farmers during and after the Medieval Climate Anomaly based on a statistically downscaled climate model. Environmental Research Letters.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Resilience thinking: Preparing for and recovering from COVID-19 in the context of compound risks

By Finn Laurien, researcher in the IIASA Risk and Resilience Program and Reinhard Mechler, Acting Program Director IIASA Risk and Resilience Program

The global COVID-19 crisis is challenging the social fabric of countries and communities across the globe. Interventions such as lockdowns, social distancing measures, and economic stimulus packages have been introduced to reinforce societal resilience. The resilience of national health systems is particularly in the spotlight – primarily keeping occupancy numbers of intensive care beds under a critical threshold, as well as improving access to basic health services for people infected with the virus, and ensuring that infections do not spread further.

© piyushpriyanka|Unsplash

At the same time, many COVID-19 affected regions and communities are confronted with additional multiple threats, including disaster and climate risks like flooding. For example, South Asia will be facing the monsoon season soon, and cyclones have already ravaged islands in the Pacific. So the question becomes, how do we support communities in preparing for and building resilience to such compound events like disasters AND infectious diseases?

Resilience has emerged as a system-based concept that explains how systems respond to shocks. IIASA has a long history of conceptualizing and assessing resilience. In partnership with members of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (ZFRA), IIASA has co-developed an innovative approach called the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) that measures the various facets of what builds resilience against flood risk at community levels. The FRMC consists of a holistic framework and an indicator-based assessment tool. It measures resilience before and after disasters at the community level – where people feel the impacts acutely and work together to take action. We define resilience widely in terms of a systems-thinking and development-centric conceptualization: “The ability of a system, community or society to pursue its social, ecological and economic development and growth objectives, while managing its disaster risk over time in a mutually reinforcing way.”

The FRMC measures resilience across a number of indicators that are collected through humanitarian and development NGO Alliance partners in communities in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. It provides vital information for decision makers by prioritizing the resilience-building measures most needed by a community. At community and higher decision-making levels, measuring resilience also provides a basis for improving the design of public or privately funded programs to strengthen disaster resilience.

One of the seven themes that has been defined as a key aspect from the FRMC systems thinking approach is “Life and Health”, which is also relevant when looking at COVID-19 and includes access to and availability of healthcare facilities; strategies to maintain or quickly resume interrupted healthcare services; safety knowledge and Water and Sanitation (WASH).

Insights into dealing with COVID-19

In a recent research paper we analyzed FRMC data collected in 118 communities across nine countries in Asia, Latin America, and the US and explored which capacities or capitals contribute most to community disaster resilience. We identified multiple interactions, for instance, how action on bolstering health also contributes to social capital. There are two takeaways from this research that are relevant to other compound events, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, fair and functioning health systems play a key role in building resilience against compound risk – against flood as well as against other stresses that lead to negative health outcomes. Strategies that enable interrupted health systems to quickly resume are critical, and need to be in place before a disaster strikes.

In the communities where ZFRA conducted FRMC studies, disaster resilience and the health component scored relatively low at the beginning. However, when interventions such as household health-related trainings in Mexico, or hospital capacity assessments in Nepal, were implemented  (with our measurement tool running), the health component increased for almost all countries (except for the USA) (see blue line in Figure 1). As the health component is a key part of resilience it contributed to disaster resilience overall, including ‘compound risks’ (green line in Figure 1). This means that (further) accelerating investments into health services (e.g., as part of COVID-19 response and recovery packages) leads to additional benefits for other shocks.

Figure 1: Between 2013 and 2018, increased community resilience can be attributed to resilience against compound risk (green line) and includes a health component (blue line). The difference between the two lines indicates the attribution of the increase in specific resilience to flood hazard.

A second takeaway is that through a so-called ‘multifunctionality’ effect, co-benefits are induced. This provides evidence of a virtuous cycle effect where higher resilient capacity in one area fosters communities’ resilience capacity for other functions. As community functions and outcomes are connected in a community system, improved access to health services can generate co-benefits (e.g., healthier individuals attain higher levels of livelihoods and build more social networks, which again build resilience during a shock). This has been well understood in the theoretical literature, and our analysis for the first time provides needed evidence at community level for flood and disaster risk.

If these co-benefit effects are taken into account, we find evidence that Food and Water strategies (see Figure 2) can be most efficient in building resilience to both adverse flood and health events. In fact, our sources of resilience indicate that the capacity in the Food and Water dimensions also foster health resilience.

Risk awareness is hazard-specific but can be integrated into packages that tackle risk generally. For example, health relevant interventions for infectious diseases (e.g., appropriate hygiene measures) can be integrated into flood evacuation plans. A best-practice example from our work are the campaigns and fairs carried out in Mexico and Nepal targeting educational awareness on health-related impacts during flood events.

 Going forward with resilience thinking

Figure 2: Attribution of flood resilience to health component. Some dimensions show a similar pattern in building both flood and health resilience. Other flood-related efforts are too specific and cannot be attributed to resilience against COVID-19.

There is growing recognition by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners of the need to address compound risks in a development-centric way, tackling multiple threats with a focus on human wellbeing, rather than on hazards only. The COVID-19 crisis calls for donors, national governments, civil society, and communities to invest in comprehensive approaches that create multiple benefits.

Our system-based resilience research shows that using a systems resilience assessment at community level can identify direct short- and longer-term benefits. Investing in capacities builds resilience against compound risk such as flooding and infectious diseases. Investment into programs that ramp up health systems and WASH creates multiple benefits in terms of tackling COVID-19 and disaster and climate risks simultaneously. In the context of the upcoming monsoon and hurricane season, this means COVID-19 response and recovery packages need to invest in measures that also reduce social and economic impacts from COVID-19 under flood hazards. Additionally, diversifying household income strategies is high among the measures that unlock multiple co-benefits against compound risks. As action on COVID-19 (hopefully) moves from crisis response to recovery, such measures should be part and parcel of a post-COVID-19 recovery process, reducing the risk of vulnerable groups falling into poverty traps.

References:

Laurien, F., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Keating, A., Campbell, K., Mechler, R., & Czajkowski, J. (2020). A typology of community flood resilience. Regional Environmental Change, 20(1), 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01593-x

Keating, A., Campbell, K., Mechler, R., Magnuszewski, P., Mochizuki, J., Liu, W., Szoenyi, M., McQuistan, C. (2016). Disaster resilience: What it is and how it can engender a meaningful change in development policy. Development Policy Review 35 (1): 65-91

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

The world needs IIASA: Pavel Kabat looks back

Pavel Kabat (c) M. Silveri | IIASA

Pavel Kabat is chief scientist at the World Meteorological Organization and was director general of IIASA from February 2012 until September 2018

As I leave IIASA after almost seven years, it is interesting to reflect on my time here. When I came to IIASA, the Strategic Plan 2011- 2020 was in the initial stages of implementation. Among the priorities was increasing the level of systems science and cross-cutting thinking across the institute’s programs and to make IIASA a really global institution.

My priorities initially were exactly that. IIASA had 18 national members and was then largely dominated by the “Global North”. My priority was to expand global membership and at the same time to activate the role of the existing “Global South” members like China and India.

We pursued a strategy in which new IIASA members represent a particular regional and thematic setting, , and where IIASA’s systems approach can make a difference. For example, we invited Vietnam to join as I believe it is a country which will be one of the next “Asian tigers”, with a fast-growing, booming economy and society. IIASA developed the models and methods to understand fast transition processes in Asian tiger countries, like the Republic of Korea. Such representative examples allow us to test the models.

We welcomed other new members like Indonesia, Mexico, and Australia. The UK was one of the key founding members of IIASA in 1972 but it left IIASA for political reasons in 1982. I was extremely proud that my IIASA colleagues, the IIASA Council and I were able to make a sufficiently appealing case for the UK to rejoin IIASA in 2015. The concept of building bridges across the political divide through IIASA collaborative science came best into fruition by having both Iran and Israel to join as members in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

This steep growth in membership inevitably brought additional challenges to the IIASA system. IIASA has also not been unaffected by changes in the world, with an erosion and fragmentation of the global political and economic discourse, decreasing levels of global solidarity, and new geopolitical tensions.

Now, the future role of IIASA in this changing world is a main subject of discussion as IIASA and the Council develop an updated strategy beyond 2020, assisted by a large external review of IIASA in 2017. In my view, the current world needs IIASA more than ever. There are very few places in the world which provide a truly scientific platform to interact across geopolitical divides in and between the global North and the global South. IIASA can act as a unique kind of “honest broker”, not to be compared to the major think tanks or science councils, as we have both a think tank function and the multidisciplinary capacity to do actual analytical work in house.

I believe there is a paramount set of reasons for this wonderful, unique institute to be supported in the future but a number of things will have to change, and in some cases, radically.

Let me start with the most important aspect of IIASA, its people. I believe that the IIASA system should revisit the way talent and human capital is attracted to and kept at IIASA with a good 21st century attitude to career and personal life balance.

We now have 380 colleagues on our staff coming from 48 countries. In addition we have about 2,400 collaborators from 830 partner institutions connected to IIASA activities and projects across the world. In 2017 we hosted 2,421 additional researchers and conference delegates to collaborate with us. In my six and a half years as IIASA director general I saw IIASA staff growing from about 270 in 2011 to almost 400 in 2018 and I’m proud to see that more than half of our new colleagues are young, mid-career high potentials.

I think it is our duty as senior management to provide decent career and life perspectives to our young and mid-career generation colleagues, and to focus more on the equality, diversity, and overall wellbeing of staff. IIASA could introduce new elements like shared appointments across the world, and better aid colleagues with young families. IIASA should invest intellectually and financially into succession plans, and attracting and keeping talent, particularly the young talent. Within the next five years, more than three quarters of senior IIASA management will reach retirement age.

My second suggestion is that IIASA should substantially recalibrate and improve its relationship with its National Member Organizations (NMOs). But it takes two to waltz, as a good Viennese would say.  A genuine mix of a global good scientific and science-to-policy work with a regional portfolio and national value portfolios, together with a capacity development and research partnership training concept can be easily developed for every IIASA member individually as well as for clusters of countries. However, the NMOs in most of our member countries would need to change their modus operandi too, and become active co-owners, distributors and true strategic focal points of IIASA in both academic and science-to-policy landscapes in their countries.

Thirdly, I believe the IIASA community, from the Council to individual researchers, should “walk the talk” and demonstrate a pioneering, leadership spirit when it comes to future strategic scientific focus. For example, IIASA integrated models, despite being among to the best in the world, are not really able to deal with the major social, institutional, governance, and behavioral changes needed for a global transformation. What sense does it make to produce yet another set of articles and assessments about the world to be kept within 1.5°C of global warming instead of 2°C, while we have no real clue how the social, economic, political, and individual behavior system will cope with the already very bold 2°C degree target? We need to understand the role of social science to achieve our bold environmental ambitions.

Fourthly, IIASA should remain a place for exploration, new ideas, surprising combinations of thoughts and disciplines, a place welcoming exploratory thinking in system science, and open to those with good ideas regardless of their place of origin or nationality.

Finally, it is imperative that IIASA keeps investing in collaborative and partnership links with its host country Austria, whose crucial role cannot be overemphasized. I have been deeply thankful for the generous support of Austrian institutions ranging from the federal president, and the Academy of Science, to the municipality of Laxenburg.

In my new role as the Chief Scientist of the UN WMO I will be dealing with many fields in which IIASA has been active, so we will continue to meet and collaborate often. IIASA has become part of my identity and I will give any support I can to this unique institution in the future.

I would like to wish my successor, Albert van Jaarsveld, the IIASA governing council, and all of my IIASA colleagues, all possible success.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Estimating risk across Africa

by Melina Filzinger, IIASA Science Communication Fellow

Having just finished tenth grade, Lillian Petersen from New Mexico, USA is currently spending the summer at IIASA, working with researchers from both the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM), and Risk and Resilience (RISK) programs on developing risk models for all African countries.

At a talk Petersen gave at the Los Alamos Nature Center/Pajarito Environmental Education Center, her method for predicting food shortages in Africa from satellite images caught the attention of Molly Jahn from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jahn, who is collaborating with the ESM and RISK programs at IIASA, was so impressed with Petersen’s work that she added her to her research group and connected her to IIASA researchers for a joint project.

One of the indicators used to estimate poverty in Nigeria. © Lillian Petersen | IIASA

Knowing which areas are at risk for disasters like conflict, disease outbreak, or famine is often an important first step for preventing their occurrence. In developed countries, there is already a lot of work being done to estimate these risks. In developing countries, however, a lack of data often hinders risk modeling, even though these countries are often most at risk for disasters.

Many humanitarian crises, like famine, are closely connected to poverty. However, high resolution poverty estimates are only available for a few African countries. This is why Petersen and her colleagues are developing methods to obtain those poverty estimates for all of Africa using freely available data, like maps showing major roads and cities, as well as high-resolution satellite images. Information about poverty in a certain region can be extracted from this data by considering several indicators. For example, areas that are close to major roads or cities, or those that have a large amount of lighting at night, meaning that electricity is available, are usually less poor than those without these features. The researchers are also analyzing the trading potential with neighboring countries, the land cover type, and distance to major shipping routes, such as waterways.

As no single one of these indicators can perfectly predict poverty, the scientists combine them. They “train” their model using the countries for which poverty data exists: A comparison of the model’s output and the real data helps to reveal which combination of indicators gives a reliable estimate of poverty. Following this, they plan to apply that knowledge in order to accurately predict poverty with high spatial resolution over the entire African continent.

Poverty data for Nigeria in 2010 (left) and poverty estimates based on five different indicators (right). © Lillian Petersen | IIASA

Once these estimates exist, Petersen and her colleagues will apply risk models to find out which areas are particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks, famine, and conflicts. “I hope that this research will inform policymakers about which populations are most at risk for humanitarian crises, so that they can target these populations systematically in aid programs,” says Petersen, adding that preventing a disaster is generally cheaper than dealing with its aftermath.

The skills Petersen is using for her research are largely self-taught. After learning computer programming with the help of a book when she was in fifth grade, Petersen conducted her first research project on the effect of El Nino on the winter weather in the US when she was in seventh grade. “It was a small project, but I was pretty excited to obtain scientific results from raw data,” she says. After this first success she has been building up her skills every year, by competing at science fairs across the US with her research projects.

Her internship at IIASA gives Petersen access to the resources she needs to take her research to the next level. “Getting feedback from some of the top scientists in the field here at IIASA is definitely improving my work,’’ she says. Petersen is hoping to publish a paper about her project next year, and wants to major in applied mathematics after she finishes high school.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.